Today, I was out making a little planter, as I am often out doing… when I heard this noise that sounded just like my bees… but REALLY loud. I thought “weird how sound acts sometimes…”
Now, the thing is, every time I say that, it’s not that sound is acting weird. Today was no different.
As I walked over to my hive it became pretty clear that something was up:
Bee Swarm Cloud
My 5-year-old said “they covered the sky.” They did. Wow. Talk about feeling like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. I just stood there thinking… ‘oh, boy, I’m gonna get in trouble for this.’
Anyway, they moved slowly, like a tornado, into my neighbor’s yard… and eventually came to rest in this big bee stalagtite about 15-20 feet up in a tree:
Bee Stalagtite
Or… Bee Central America… or something.
That’s a lotta bees.
Bee Swarm Capture Rig
Anyway, never one to avoid a challenge, I screwed a couple 2×4s to a step ladder to make a platform for a box and climbed my orchard ladder to shake the little kooks into the box. They were not all that happy about that, but I successfully avoided getting stung again.
Now the dumb part… not knowing anything about anything, I dumped them all back into the hive. Heh… turns out you can’t do that. The word is that once they’ve decided to swarm, that’s that. Oops.
Well, the fact is… I don’t need another hive. I don’t *want* another hive. About any solution to a swarm results in another hive. So, I may just let nature take its course, and I’ll call someone when they swarm again to come pick them up. There’s always people out there looking to pick up a swarm for a top bar hive or whatever.
On the other hand, in my ignorance, I dumped them back in, added an empty super, and swapped some frames around, and they seem to have settled in to that situation– at least for now.
I’ll keep you informed.
Is the neighbor that’s “allergic”?
Wow! You are way braver than I am.
I covet your orchard ladder, by the way.
Nope… luckily, they picked the Nature Conservancy neighbor. She’s mostly thinking this means a free beehive for her.
FJ, I am so not brave. I was thinking that this was it… I was rushing into certain death with this deal, but… I couldn’t just leave them there. Someone had to do something, and I couldn’t come up with anyone else.
As for the orchard ladder… yeah, it’s great. I put it off and put it off… but it’s super stable. This was a perfect application. My trees are all getting to the point where anything less was suicidal.
Who knew the end could be so beautiful. It does look like a bright white light.
You OK, there, Amber?
[...] Honey Bee Swarm [...]
[...] So, I took out any frames that looked particularly gruesome, scraped off the nasty bits, and put those aside in the empty (former Adams) box. The rest of the good ones were sorted by cleanliness, honey contents, and activity and replaced into the clean boxes. A week or so later, and they all seem to have settled nicely into their new home. I left the old frames nearby in case they feel the need to go pick up anything they left behind. Eventually, I’ll clean it up and set it aside should we have a recurrence of last year’s swarm party. [...]